Month: October 2016

There used to be a time when one of the first questions in a website consultations was always “Do you want your website to be responsive?” Firstly, what is a responsive website? A responsive website is one that works on any screen size, without sacrificing features to the end user. There was a time when mobility wasn’t too much of a concern. The mobile web browser simply wasn’t mainstream and developers did the bare minimum that the client required for their mobile users. E-Commerce wasn’t used on mobile, video was non-existent, and you basically had images and text to work with.

What changed? Phones got smarter, and so did the web browsers. This isn’t just phones. It’s all mobile devices from the smallest Android to the largest iPad. There are literally hundreds of screen sizes that people may be using. What could be worse? Oh yeah. Most tablets and phones also have rotating screens depending on how the device is held. That literally doubles the amount of screen sizes to worry about.

A standard HTML website will not scale with different screen sizes. It will either take A LOT of scrolling, or it may be too small to read. Neither option is ideal. A way to solve that issue is being responsive. A responsive site will scale elements and move objects around to accommodate the lack of screen real estate. Here is the JadeServe site on a desktop screen with 27″ of screen space, in comparison to the same site on a mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S5) with a 5.1″ screen.

Desktop

Mobile

You can see that some of the objects have moved around, but it is legible and usable. You’ll notice the menu has moved to be hidden at the top (The button with three lines on it), and there is no horizontal scrolling. Everything has resized to fit our screens, WITHOUT having multiple versions of the site. This is the power of a responsive site. It is JadeServe’s standard practices to make every site responsive. It is cost effective for the customer, and keeps the customer’s visitors happy.